Election – Australia

In a week’s time Australia will vote for its seventh Prime Minister in nine years.

Not the most flattering record to have, and one which a country like Australia does not deserve. In these times stability of leadership is crucial yet here we are at it again.

Admittedly four of those Prime Ministers were not elected but voted by their own parties for self-preservation and quests for power. Either way both major parties indulged in this high stakes game and both have lost voter confidence because of it.

I voted early so the current bombardment of political advertising is lost on deaf ears, and my guess is even if you haven’t voted already you have tuned them out.

Please let us have some stability. It’s really all we ask.

Trump claims he gave troops 10% pay rise – lie

When US President Donald Trump visited troops in Afghanistan recently he claimed, no boasted, that he got them all a ten percent pay increase this year.

He also claims he was counselled to only give two, three or four percent but no, the magnanimous President insisted on ten percent.

Only it was 2.4%, according to the full story at news.com.au.

He also claimed they hadn’t had a patriae in ten years. In fact they have received one every year. More last year in fact.

So the Donald Trump personal fake news train rolls on, with self agrandising lie after lie. US citizens now know what it is like to be have Vladimir Putin as President.

Why I would refuse an invitation to visit the US President

(I hasten to state the below is my personal opinion.)

Sorry, but I just could not bring myself to be in the same room as such an arrogant, lying, manipulating, misogynistic, egotistical bag of wind.

Too harsh? Just listen to him speak, on any topic on any day and his statements are incorrect (and he knows it, so technically they are lies). He pats himself on the back for achievements that are nothing short of fictitious.

Build a wall and make Mexico pay? Not happening. He even now says the wall is being built but no construction has started.

Paying for most of NATO? No. In fact anything he says cannot be taken seriously he has lied so many times.

He complains about fake news, which does exist, but he is also the cause of much of it.

And his treatment of women…those recorded words about grabbing any woman he wants because he’s rich should have been enough for him to lose the election. Unfortunately this may say more about the perceptions of the American public, or the fact it was actually true before women recently spoke up (keep going!), than it does about him. But still, only an arrogant repulsive beast would say such things about women.

Bottom line…why would I want to waste my time? Which unfortunately is what Congress is thinking as well.

Fortunately there are only eighteen months to go before, surely, he is voted out. Then we can all breathe again.

Then I just might reconsider my ‘boycott’ of the White House. As long as it is fumigated first.

Detroit – still a ghost city (Zombieland) from the financial crisis?

The cover photo shows Highland Park Community College, in 1985 and 2012. It closed in 2009 because of financial reasons.

With photos like this of Detroit so easy to find, how can America still dictate terms to other countries, spending billions on wars it cannot afford when at home there are hundreds of thousands of homeless people and many still suffering from the GFC?

It is unconscionable conduct from supposedly the leader of the free world, when in fact it only leads in hypocrisy.

Take care of your own first, then if you have money to spare spend it in other areas. But until every American has a home you have no right to spend so much on defence, or as it should correctly be called, warmongering.

What is so damn difficult??

“Pain specialist Dr Marc Russo said his clinic in Newcastle treats about 2,000 new patients with chronic pain every year.

“And I’m very worried, and as many of us in the faculty of pain medicine are very worried, that ultimately it will lead to the prescription of more opioids as a sort of back-stop measure and we know that this carries significant risk and often very little benefit,” he said.”

So opioids continue to get a bad name, and cause more deaths by overdose than car accidents per year in the US because people take so many to try to stop their pain.

And yet CBD oil, which would earn the Government tax dollars instead of costing them by subsidising prescriptions and paying for opioid patients using hospital beds.

It is such a simple, straight forward decision with SO many benefits, why are we not following 40 other countries and giving chronically ill people the ability to buy it??

As usual in our society in the last ten years, in many areas, it makes no damn sense.

Reference here.

Have we, as Australians, lost our unique identity?

Back when we were throwing ourselves onto an outdoor cooking appliance to try to be noticed, we knew (or at least knew we thought we knew) who we were.

We were fun beachgoers who didn’t take ourselves too seriously, had a permanent cheeky grin, didn’t care if the world liked us as we we were or not, and loved a bit of mischief with tongues firmly planted in cheeks.

Then we completely forgot where we were and became rather demanding (“Where the bloody hell are you?”), refused to call prawns shrimps anymore, used outside for lonesome walks instead of social gatherings, knew we had your attention and thought we deserved more, and smugly believed we were better than most (mainly because we were).

Now we are overconfident, look down our noses at others (“No more boats!”), know we are the best at everything except for keeping our talent from leaving Australia, haven’t got time to go to the beach anymore because we constantly worry about working harder for less money, suffering hidden inflation (eventually we will be buying chip bags with only one chip in them and drinks with only a few drops to quench our once mighty thirst), hidden unemployment, an average income apparently of around $72,000 when HECS debts start being repaid at the ‘average income’ of $54,000, can’t buy a home and don’t know who our Prime Minister is (mainly because half the time we don’t have one).

The concept of a ‘fair go’, once the core of our essence, has been redefined and mostly abandoned (just ask a pensioner). We pay relatives $250 a fortnight to be full time carers when the market rate is $2,000, have not increased social security payments in over thirty years yet the cost of living (CPI) has increased light years beyond official figures (which the Australian Bureau of Statistics agrees, and now calls ‘Cannot Prove Inflation’), have the highest electricity prices in the world, an absurd ‘Australia Tax’ made worse by adding GST, and currently have as our nation’s leader a guy who we don’t know, don’t really care about, or for.

I think I prefer the old Australia, even if I have to call a prawn a shrimp.

At least back then I wouldn’t have to call our Prime Minister “temporary”, or pretend that everything was under control. In particular I wouldn’t have to listen to the words “humble, grass roots, servants of the people, we really care” every year when the next PM is sworn in.

I’ll take some unknown food cooked over a melted female doll anyday.

It’s enough to make you choke on your shrimp.

Another new PM

So Australia has yet another Prime Minister, and just yesterday the same man pledged his full support for the guy he defeated today.

Unfortunately from the outside it looks like Malcolm Turnbull was never given a chance to be the Prime Minister he wanted to be. In fact in his own words he said keeping the party unified took a significant amount of his time.

That’s what we like to hear, that those working for us, the long forgotten electors who are paying their exhorbitant salary and benefits, are only getting around seventy percent of their attention. The rest is on keeping their jobs and undermining those above them so they can have their job.

If they were my employees they would be given an ultimatum. Either take a thirty percent reduction in salary or resign.

They say they are concerned about our significant cost of living increase over the last ten years, our wages not keeping up with real inflation, our ludicrously expensive electricity prices, our sick waiting months and sometimes years to be seen and our elderly and unemployed who have not had an increase in their social payments for thirty-five years.

Does anyone, anywhere, believe them anymore? No matter what side you voted for in the past ten years, they have changed leaders (and therefore PM’s) more than ever before and made us an international laughing stock.

Time and again we see their naked ambition, their ‘do anything’ attitude towards their own careers and their unbridled megalomania.

So why should we expect it to change?

I predict a non verdict in the next Federal election, whenever that may be. Parliament will be full of independents and small parties as we collectively give up on the self aggrandisement of the two major parties.

But then minorities have held governments to account before, one of whom was described by all who spoke to him as the most stupid person they had ever met.

Well I say their stupidity would probably be an improvement over what we have now.

For heaven’s sake, it could not be worse.

Unions – why I’ve changed my mind about them

A long time ago, before the powerful wharfies union was beaten in a protracted and often ugly (children brought to the front line to hide behind) battle against much needed changes, I thought unions were archaic and had lost their relevance.

Now I wish they would return.

Yes we still have unions, but they are mostly powerless and dictated to by employers who know how dire our unemployment (and underemployment) situation is in this country. They know the real numbers, not those controlled by Canberra.

They consider you to be employed if you work just one hour a fortnight. Blatant manipulation of those without a voice, and yet no-one reports on it and we don’t hear it mentioned in the evening news or asked of our leaders during interviews.

Why not??

We also used to believe in a ‘fair go’, but after seeing record business profits go straight to the executives, with often job cuts announced in the same week, our fair go has gone.

Large company tax cuts will NOT result in more employment or higher wages. There are countless incidences of the exact opposite occuring during the past ten years, and yet somehow the rich deserve to become richer.

The current Royal Commission into the banking and finance industry only seals this belief. Banks announce record profits then sack hundreds, sometimes thousands of workers to make sure their profit margin remains high, to maintain their bonuses.

And our unions can do nothing but feebly protest. This is not their fault and I believe they do what they can, but their thuggish behaviour of the past (1970s and 1980s) turned the public tide against them. Now they are reduced to media obscurity.

This is wrong, the pendulum has swung too far and seems stuck, unable to swing back to normality.

And so the rich executives get away with disgusting levels of pay (please, no-one is worth paying millions to each year unless they have completely turned your business around from a basket case to stratospheric profits – none of which the current crop can claim to have done).

We also have business after business not paying superannuation, underpaying and mistreating workers, and unless it makes headlines nothing is done. Even after being in the media headlines the spotlight moves so quickly in our miniscule news cycle (not to mention the fact that the vast majority of our journalists have been sacked) that all businesses have to do is wait a few days until it moves on, leaving them free to act as they please.

I certainly do not want a return to the ‘bad old days’ of unionism, but we definitely need them to be moral in their actions and outrage and powerful enough to scare big business.

Unfortunately their own actions of recent maladministration have made this nigh impossible.

So our senior executives are left to their own devices, or should I say vices, whilst their workers suffer insecurity and are paid wages that have steadily fallen behind inflation.

The gap between the rich and poor is only being enhanced by the absence of good unions and the willingness of our most senior politicians to assist those they were elected to protect.

Instead of giving the wealthy more money via tax breaks (as if they don’t earn enough), why not simply remove the $18,000 tax free threshold for those earning $200,000 or above? Why should the very rich enjoy this tax free threshold that was meant to assist the poor, which now includes our middle class?

And yet it will be the organisations, not the guilty individuals, that pay the multi-million dollar fines sought by our current Royal Commission. Those who assisted terrorists and threw Australians out of their homes and killed the ‘fair go’ continue to make more in a year than most of us do in a lifetime.

It is so absurd I’d burst out laughing, if it were not real.

Our true inflation figure and how it is ripping us off

I am sure you have all noticed the same thing.

For almost everything you purchase from the supermarket today, you are receiving around 20 percent less in actual product than you used to receive a year ago, and for the same price.

Our real inflation figure is around 7-8 percent, maybe more. Yet the figures coming out of the the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) indicate inflation is no higher than 2.5 percent.

So our wages increase by a quarter of the increased costs we pay for essential goods every day, meaning our buying power is being significantly eroded. We simply cannot buy anywhere near as much in the supermarket today as we did last year, the year before that and so on.

No wonder we all feel a lot worse off today, and get very angry when politicians state the ‘official’ yet wildly inaccurate inflation figure.

Its official title is ‘household gross disposable income’ and it is decreasing as fast as water draining from a bath once the plug is removed. Or at least it sometimes feels that way.

The ‘statistics’ say we should all be fine, yet we have more people seeking assistance than ever before. And our purchasing power has reduced by 20 percent or more on many of our regular food items.

For example, packets of nutritious nutbars we used to enjoy did come in packs of six. Without any price reduction they then contained five per pack, and now only four. They then reduced the size of each individual bar by 20 percent. The price of each box has not reduced at all

So the ABS, who only look at the surface and so obtain meaningless figures, sees no increase.

Obviously their data collection is way off, and they should have started to include the size of items as well as price some years ago.

It started when bottles of wine and spirits reduced from 750ml to 700ml, with no increase in price, and the ABS registered no increase in inflation.

Many of us did not notice this seven percent increase in overall price, encouraging others to do the same.

The ABS has been completely wrong for some years now.

Packets of potato chips now contain far fewer chips, and they cunningly fill the rest of each bag with compressed air. This actually adds weight, meaning the weight shown on the packet is the same, or very close to the same, weight was before. Unfortunately we cannot eat air, yet we are now paying for it.

Once again the fast diminishing cash in our pockets tells the real story.

If the ABS does not get its act together quickly and measure the real cost of living increases we experience every day, we will soon have our buying power reduced by 50 percent with only, if we are lucky, an increase in wages of 2.5 percent.

Businesses know this, and also know it contributes to their ever increasing bottom lines so they are not going to speak up any time soon. The government, likewise, loves announcing ‘low’ inflation as evidence of their wonderful economic management.

I have read quotes from officials within the ABS admitting they are not getting the inflation figures correct. How about they simply include measurements/quantities of food items we now receive for the same money? It would quickly show the correct inflation figure, at approximately four times the current figure.

However that would mean admitting to incorrect calculations for the past several years. Why do that when the government is so happy with the way they calculate it now?

We are all being squeezed in a vice consisting of business profits and fast diminishing products for the same amount of our money.

Once again our confidence in those who are meant to know what they are doing, because it directly affects our quality of life, is eroding almost as quickly as the size of the products we buy.

So if the increased profits businesses are making from this underhanded price manipulation are not being shared with us in higher wages, why does the federal government think their planned tax cuts will be passed on?

As always the lower and middle classes suffer so the rich can get richer. The current gap between the rich and poor has never been bigger and shows no sign of slowing.

When the results of all the bi-elections from yesterday come in and victory is dominated by independents, the two main political party’s have only themselves to blame.

We are not as gullible as they think we are.

Finally I must, in the interest of balance, mention the new government here in South Australia. So far they have met all their election promises and look like they are doing their best to meet all of them wherever possible. This is reflected in recent business confidence figures being the highest this State has seen for a very, very long time.

Unfortunately they have no clout when it comes to calculating real inflation. We can only hope that a federal government will follow their lead soon and tell it like it is.

In the meantime we progressively get poorer and, unless we read and note the weight and quantity of everything we buy, it will only get worse.

But hey, with inflation at only 2.5 percent why worry?

What’s in a name? Everything!

The world renowned scientists in Israel have 30+ years of verifiable studies showing that CBD oil significantly reduces (and in some cases erases) chronic pain with no side-affects, and it is not addictive.

Other studies around the world have had the same results. Even medical studies here in Australia.

Yet we (those of us who suffer daily, with no or very little quality of life) are not allowed to access it because ‘wowsers’ hear the letters CBD and react with, “That’s cannabis! You just want to get high! Just like those 60s hippies!”

CBD (cannabis oil) contains NO THC, the stuff that gives you the high, so NO we CANNOT get high, we just want our chronic, debilitating pain gone. Oh, and to live a life approaching normal would be a huge bonus, thanks.

So if it’s the name that is causing all this resistance, why not change it? Call it something in Latin, people seem to love that. Or just something unpronounceable and therefore important-sounding like all the other drugs on the market, that are addictive and have a list of side-affects that take fifteen minutes to read and over two hours to understand. Then there would be no overreaction.

If they changed the name to simply ‘vitamin oil’ there would be no problem. Vitamins are easily imported, advertised and sold with claims that they ‘may’ assist every sickness known to man. I am sure it would be government approved within days, if government approval was even required.

But it currently has the name ‘cannabis’ in it so I must be a strungout hippie, chasing a high.

It’s all in the name.

People cannot get past the image that pops into their head when you say ‘cannabis’, of smoke filled rooms and people rolling around in their own psychedelic world. Yes, it should be their problem and not mine, but I have been in constant pain for over two years now because people cannot let go of their deep-seated biases.

I must admit that, until I became chronically ill, I probably would have thought the same – hippies out to legalise their highs from smoking weed.

It is a very deep-seated stereotype.

So I cannot blame anyone or get angry, there isn’t any point. I will, however, continue to write about it here and to my local politicians because chronic full body pain, with not a second of rest in over two years, can really get you down.

Then there is the massive financial saving.

I read daily of people with my condition, or worse, calling ambulances and going to hospital so they can be placed on higher pain medication for a while. Each visit costs you, the Australian taxpayer, thousands of dollars and clogs up an already stretched health system.

Personally, over the next few years I could save you all tens of thousands of dollars if I was allowed to buy what I know helps my condition.

Yes I can try jumping through hoops and attempt to navigate a mountain of red tape (and I really mean a mountain because I have seen it), but that costs a fortune in time and money (a medical professional has to fill it out, paid by Medicare out of our tax dollars) and I don’t think I would survive the stress.

Red Tape. If only we could grow cannabis oil as quickly as Red Tape, everyone in pain would find instant relief.

The money we sufferers would save the government in unnecessary ambulance callouts, hospital stays and subsidised (addictive) painkillers would be in the millions. Money I am sure you would rather the government spent on other things, or even better returned to your pocket.

Which leads me to my final point. With dozens (closer to hundreds now) of studies over decades as proof that CBD oil is safe, not addictive, not capable of giving anyone a high and yet people are stopping us from accessing it, can we sue these people for the pain and suffering we go through every day?

It is criminal, in my pain-filled opinion, that I know what helps my chronic pain, I’m prepared to pay for it myself and save the government thousands in subsidised medicine, but I cannot buy it because the government here disallows anyone to import it, or sell it without a pathetic initial prescription that lasts just two months.

Alas it is all in a name. How about we call the oil Fred? Fred oil sounds pretty harmless to me.